Dark Before the Dawn
by MKproot
Summary: Car crashes don't seem to lead Nick Stokes to anything but trouble. Will he be able to save himself, Ray and a victim from a previous case from two killers playing games with the CSIs?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own the ideas/characters presented in "CSI" and "Criminal Minds." The only thing I own in this story is the SSK, which is an inside joke with me and a friend. Please enjoy. :D

* * *

The orange rays of the Nevada sun shot through his bedroom window onto the covered mattress of his bed. The rays were bright and yet they had a dark attitude. In the sky, you could see the obscure storm clouds surround the afternoon sun. The clouds surrounded it almost perfectly too; it was as if the sun was repelling the clouds away or maybe the sun was repelling the storm.

Whatever the reason, the sunlight caused Nick Stokes to open his almond brown eyes. He was fading in and out of sleep through the vivid nightmares manifested from his memories, mostly the ones that had caused him some sort of physical or mental pain.

Nick has been traumatized ever since he was nine years old, but now he feels like all the weight of his near death or traumatic experiences was coming down on him at this moment in time. It was like feeling all of the pain from those events was combining slowly and painfully. He felt like screaming, but he couldn't find his voice to do it. He felt like crying, but no tears came out of his eyes. This is just like he felt when he hallucinated his autopsy when he had been buried alive.

He manages to turn his head and suddenly he snaps out of this trance. The first sight he acknowledges is the card Cassie had made him for saving her four years ago. Her parents and brother had been murdered and she had been kidnapped. Her throat had been slit and she had been left for dead on a coast of a lake. Some members of the team, notably Sara Sidle, had believed Cassie to be dead, but Nick had his mind set on rescuing her.

And he did.

His alarm clock blares as he realizes he needs to get ready for work. He forces himself to sit up and made the motion to push off his blanket, but realizes he had pushed it on the floor during his nightmare of being in a glass coffin six feet underground.

He picks it up and tosses it back onto his bed as he turns off his alarm. He grabs a fresh shirt out of a drawer and pulls it on. He had left his jeans on, too exhausted to take them off last night. He yawns and suddenly feels a weird sensation as his mouth stretches. He then remembers that two nights ago he had been in a car crash. He still has a small cut by his lip to prove it.

He quickly combs his hair, grabs his cell phone and a bottle of water, and then grabs his car keys and heads to his garage. He normally rushes through his morning like this because when you work the hours that Nick does, you want to get all the sleep you can get down to the minute.

He turns the key and his car starts. The radio is turned up relatively loud, or at least loud enough for Nick to receive a jolt through his body. He remembers how Warrick's radio would be just as loud or even louder. One time, Nick got a ride with Warrick to work while his car was getting painted back to its original color. His car had been stolen and given a paint job that didn't appeal to Nick's artistic taste. So Nick beat Warrick to his car in the garage and took the opportunity to turn down the radio. When Warrick started the car he asked Nick why the volume was down low and Nick denied ever doing such a thing to his best friend's car.

Warrick later printed the dial and found Nick's fingerprint on it.

Nick chuckles as he remembers that event, and has the sudden urge to call Warrick up to chat. But he then realizes he can't. Why?  
You can't call a corpse buried six feet underground in a coffin that you helped carry to its resting place.

Nick didn't even touch the radio after that thought. He winced at some of the songs' louder notes, but he did this as a nod to his late friend.

He pulled in to the parking garage and headed straight to his office with one of his many piles of paperwork that came with the new title of Assistant Supervisor.

He sighs as he walks into his office, still feeling as if he were walking into his parents' bedroom. Grissom used to own this office. Sometimes Nick feels the spirit of his intelligent, quirky mentor as he sits in the same seat that Grissom once sat in. Other times, he feels the stress of all the paperwork he helps Catherine do.

He sits in his chair as he waits for Catherine to come and give him a case. Catherine had called and said she would be a couple minutes late. Nick understands why she's late; she does have a daughter to take care of.

He sets the pile of papers he had worked on at home on his desk and puts a post-it note on it to mark that it is finished. He then turns to his other pile which he hasn't touched yet.

He begins to fill out the first page and then stops. He decides to check on his spider and suddenly flashes back to the days of playing video games instead of homework. He looks over to the bowl containing his arachnid friend, and notices it's empty.

_Oh crap._ Nick thought as he began to look on the floor for his pet, praying it didn't crawl out the window or something.

"Looking for this?" Raymond Langston asks. Nick looks up and sees Langston holding Nick's spider in the palm of his hand. "Hodges said you should get a leash for him,"

Nick smiles and takes his spider from Langston's hand. He puts it back in its bowl and puts a piece of paper over it as a temporary cover.

"Thanks, Ray,"

"No problem, Nick,"

"Hey, you two," Catherine Willows beckons from Nick's doorway. "You got a 419 in the desert. You may also have a potential kidnapping because one of the responding officers haven't reported in yet. I'll catch you later,"

Nick takes the slip with the coordinates of the crime scene and nods to his superior.

"I'll drive," Nick volunteers and the two CSIs head to the garage and get in Nick's car. Nick starts it up and the radio starts playing loudly yet again.

"Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend..." the radio shouts.

Nick quickly turns the radio down as both he and Langston had winced.

"Long story," Nick explained. "Then again, it seems like it's gonna be a long drive..."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own the ideas/characters presented in "CSI" and "Criminal Minds." The only thing I own in this story is the SSK, which is an inside joke with me and a friend. Please enjoy. :D

* * *

"Uh-oh, I think I took a wrong turn," Nick says as he drives to the side of the road to figure out where he went wrong. He grabs the GPS to get a better look but it freezes. "And now our map is broken...Great,"

"Too bad there aren't highways in the desert," Langston remarks, looking at an old map of the Nevada area. The map only highlights the major highways, which is one reason Nick doesn't use it anymore. "I think I have an app for situations like this..."

Langston takes out his iPhone and tries to unlock it, but all he receives is a black screen. He presses the power button, but nothing happens.

"Phone's dead...Weird, I charged it this morning,"

Nick takes out his phone to try to get a hold of the officers or maybe even David Phillips, who may already be at the scene prepping the dead body to be taken to the morgue.

"Mine is, too...What is going on?"

"It's like we're in the Bermuda Triangle," Langston says as he looks out the window. "And I don't think there are any locals to direct us,"

"I don't think it will be too hard to find flashing lights and the stench of a dead body in the desert," Nick says starts the car back up again and keeps driving on the road he was on.

They kept driving for about ten minutes and came to a medium-sized hill. As they came to the top of the hill, they could see a large, two-story house with a patrol car parked outside of it. The lights are flashing, but the siren is off.

"Well, I guess I didn't take a wrong turn after all," Nick remarks. He looks to Ray and they both chuckle, but then Nick suddenly feels one of his tires ramming into something large and hard and before he knew it, his car did a somersault over the large object. Langston pushes against the ceiling, shouting loudly in horror. Nick accelerates just as he did when his other car had undergone the same disaster. This time, however, the car doesn't land on all four tires. It lands on three. Nick watches as the fourth one rolls next to a tumbleweed and eventually hits the ground in surrender.

"That is the second goddamn time this month!" Nick exclaims as he staggers out of his car. Langston practically falls out, coughing from all the debris. "You okay, Ray?"

"Nick, I think your cars have something against you," Ray coughs as he dusts off his "Forensics" windbreaker. Nick dusts off his jeans and limps toward the trunk. His ankle felt a little twisted from when he escaped from his door, but he would get over it quickly.

He opens his trunk and gets Langston's kit out. Nick can just borrow whatever Langston has for now until they need another kit. He pats his uniform to make sure his flashlight is still there and notes that his gun is in his holster. It's as if he just tripped on the ground.

He looks up into the sky and notices that the sun is now gone. The clouds are turning into a very dark grey. He knows that it is not common for rain to fall in the desert, but he has a feeling it just might drizzle today, if anything.

Nick walks up to the front door and notices that it is closed. Normally the door is held open and the perimeter of the house is surrounded with crime scene tape. Nick takes out his gun and aims his flashlight to shine in front of him.

"Get your gun out," Nick suggests. "I have a hunch that something's not right,"

"What ever happened to 'assume nothing'?" Langston laments, sporting a slight discomfort with having a gun. He was okay with having a gun until he shot a suspect down, who was going to shoot him if Langston didn't act fast. But for some reason, possibly due to a gene in his genome, he wasn't as affected by it, as he had told Nick.

"Well, we can throw that out the door every once in a while," Nick shrugs as he looked at every dark corner, every wall, every little crevice in case something was there. He notices bloody footprints on the ground and slowly avoided them. The footprints are going out a slightly visible back door. He follows the footprints up the stairs and found blood drops coming out of a room with its door open. The room has a dim light. Nick slowly looks into the room and sees that it was a normal bedroom with a dresser, a desk and a bed. It seems to be a guest bedroom based on the simplistic appearance. The only oddity in the room is the dead body of a woman on the bed with a wound to the heart. Blood had painted the light blue sheet into a crimson red color. There is a blood pool at the side of the bed and also is the source of the bloody footprints.

"Found our 419," Nick says quietly. "But where's the officers?"

Nick and Langston continue down the dark hallway, noticing another light illuminating a room. Nick starts to get farther from Langston, who is inspecting the hallway more thoroughly. Nick keeps his gun steady and slowly opens the door with the toe of his shoe, but doesn't get to see the room's contents.

He felt a hard blow to his head and he fell to the ground, the darkness overtaking him as his body started to go numb. He could hear Langston shouting to him if he's okay, but he didn't have the voice to respond. Eventually the voices he hears slowly start to fade along with the light of his flashlight and he descends slowly into unconsciousness with the strange prick of a needle. His nose tingles with the soft smell of the needle and he recognizes the formula almost immediately.

"Ether..." Nick mutters and senses no more.

* * *

"Nick!" Langston shouts and runs toward his partner as he gets injected with some drug to keep him out. "Freeze!"

The man who held Nick at gunpoint holds a gun to Langston instead of freezing. Langston shines the flashlight in his face and sees that the man is dressed in all black, even wearing a black sock over his head as part of his camouflage into the darkness.

"I believe it is you who should freeze, Raymond," the man says and Langston could just feel the devilish smirk developing under the mask. "Drop the gun or both Nick and Cassie die,"

"Cassie?" Langston questions, not lowering his gun and also looking at Nick for signs of life.

"Cassie McCormick...you know her. Remember? You worked a case not too long ago in which she was a witness at the scene? It was a crime scene at a small diner in the summer and she was having lunch with two of her friends. Since there weren't many people at the scene you did a background check on everyone there. When you got to Cassie you must have read up on the case four years ago about the McCormick family and how our pal Nicky boy here saved the poor little girl's life," The man responds. "Put the gun down,"

"Who are you? How did you know that? Where's Cassie?" Langston asks, lowering his gun only slightly, about an inch, maybe.

"That's right, you're new...You probably don't know me unless you dug into Nick's personal life through the crime scene records..." the man says. He gives Nick a little kick and chuckles.

"Nigel, stop fooling around with our guest. Take his gun and send him in," a raspy male voice calls.

_Nigel Crane?_ Langston thinks. He remembers Nick referencing that name when they were working a case in which a victim was stalked and killed. He thought it might be Crane, but then found out he was still in jail serving his 25 years to life sentence. _Come to think of it, Nick did sound a little paranoid at the thought of it being Crane..._

"Drop the gun," Nigel orders in a firm voice. Langston looks at Nick and remembers the innocent face of Cassie, who was only thirteen on that occasion. She didn't even have an attitude when being questioned like some teenagers might. She was very cooperative with them, actually.

Langston drops the gun and allows Nigel to grab his flashlight and push him into the room. The room seems to be the master bedroom based on the furniture and décor. Double bed, walk-in closet, television on the wall, desk facing a window next to a bookcase, it almost reminds Langston of his parent's bedroom, minus the television set. On the bed is a man hooked up to a heart monitor.

_This can't be good._ Langston thinks, remembering the movie _Saw III_, in which Jigsaw, who is a diabolical killer who tortures victims and forces them to make a choice in order to live, is bed ridden due to being injured by a cop and also by his cancer. He was hooked up to a heart monitor and a kidnapped doctor was forced to perform surgery on him in order for him to live.

"Dr. Ray...you must apologize for my friend's taunting. He's enjoying the fact that he gets to play with an old friend of his...Please, make yourself comfortable," the man on the bed says. Langston sits down in a chair set next to the man's bed, only because Nigel dug the gun into the back of Langston's neck and pushed him down into the chair.

"Nigel, you may go play your game," the man says weakly. "Lock the door behind you,"

A small jolt shocks Langston as he realizes that he is being trapped with this man.

"Who are you?" Langston asks.

"I'm Dr. Jekyll,"


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own the ideas/characters presented in "CSI" and "Criminal Minds." The only thing I own in this story is the SSK, which is an inside joke with me and a friend. Please enjoy. :D

* * *

"How's Warrick Brown doing?" SSA Derek Morgan asks.

"Good...for a dead person," Catherine Willows responds, happy that this conversation is over a phone. Warrick Brown is missed by the whole lab, but Catherine is on the top five list of mourners. She regrets how their relationship didn't go as far as it could have.

"My apologies," Morgan replies. "Hold on...okay, I have to go, I'll see you in an hour,"

Catherine hangs up on Morgan the same time he does with her. The Behavior Analysis Unit from the FBI has found an interest in a killer in Sin City itself. The killer has been claiming to be Dr. Jekyll, a serial killer who performs bizarre surgeries inside of his victims. Everyone on the actual Dr. Jekyll case knows that this other killer is a fraud. They refer to him as "Dr. Hyde."

Dr. Hyde doesn't necessarily perform surgeries on his victims, but does cut them open to insert part of what seems to be a message inside of them. He then sews them up and hides the wound with make-up, which washes away when they body is washed by the coroner.

After three victims, the FBI finally picked up the case. Catherine has met Morgan before along with SSA Spencer Reid. They had worked a case in which a killer was travelling between cities committing murders. Morgan and Reid were stationed in Vegas and stayed at the crime lab in the duration of the case. Catherine and Warrick helped them and got to know the agents a little. They were very respectable people. Reid and Grissom seemed to get along especially well, too.

Catherine's phone rings for the second time tonight. It's Captain Jim Brass.

"What's up, Jim?"

"I just got a suspicious sounding call from the professor," Brass answers.

"What happened?"

"He called saying they were given the wrong address. They were able to get the right one and they've called David and told him the right address,"

"Uhm...okay, what's so weird about that?"

"He called me Catherine,"

* * *

"Wakey, wakey, Nicky..."

The darkness seems so safe, though. Why should he wake up? In the darkness he can't see anything and nothing can see him. It's a win-win situation, right? Unless the other voice was out to get him in which case it was a win-lose, but at least he was on the win end.

"Nicholas..."

He wants to open his eyes, but he doesn't want to. The last thing he remembers is being hit in the head and then feeling a very light prick in his neck. God knows where he is now...in the back of an SUV, under a car in the desert, in a crate on his way to a foreign country, buried alive in a box again, face down in a pile of cow manure, on an autopsy table, in an operating room about to have some bizarre surgery performed on him, being slowly lowered down into a pit of fire ants...

"Nick!"

This voice is different. The other one was hoarse and masculine...this one is feminine and innocent sounding.

He slowly opens his eyes and finds that his hands are tied around his back. His vision is blurry, but it is beginning to clear up. He sees a young woman-a teenager-in a bathroom that he's facing. Her face is lying on the toilet in a position as if she has passed out from puking. He remembers this from somewhere...but from where?

_"Yeah. Prom night. Your date. Melissa. Bent over the toilet puking her guts out. Is that ringing any bells, huh?"_

Crane. Nigel Crane. The man who stalked Jane Galloway and then changed his target to Nick Stokes, so he murdered Jane and tormented Nick by changing her hair color to make her look like his prom date. Then, when Nick was investigating Crane's home, Crane attacked him and pushed him out of a two-story window. When Nick was sent home a day or so later, Crane was already in Nick's house. A man that Grissom had been working with on the case came knocking on Nick's door and Grissom told him to keep him there. Nick wasn't able to fulfill that order, though. Crane had killed the physic and left a large hole in Nick's ceiling from all the chaos.

Crane then got possession of Nick's gun. He taunted Nick but Nick kept his cool. He wouldn't let Crane get the satisfaction of seeing Nick break down, if that was even what he wanted in the first place. Crane ended up putting the gun to his own head and Nick prevented any shots from hitting either of them.

"_25 to life, Nick. It's over."_

_"It's not over for me. It's over for Jane Galloway,"_

_Guess this sorta proves that I was right..._Nick thinks grimly. He squirms a little as he waits for his vision to clear up. He lets out a small groan and then a louder one when he feels something come into sharp contact with his stomach contents.

"Get up," Crane demands.

"What ever happened to 'manners'?" Nick snaps back. He kicks Nigel in the ankle. Nigel recoils a little, and then aims his shotgun at Nick instead of the girl. "Yeah, that's right, point the gun at me, Nigel..."

"Shut up," Nigel says.

"You're telling me to shut up? You know, I was actually at the other end of this situation and telling the person to shut up isn't going to do anything,"

"I said 'shut up!'" Nigel repeats, yelling.

"You know, both of us know that I'm going to kick your ass so how about you just give me the shotgun, lie on the ground and tell me where Ray is?"

Nigel cocks the shotgun and bends down. Nick then stares down the nozzle of the shot gun.

"Or you could blow my brains out, thus ending the little game you obviously want to play with me, right?"

"You're very cocky today Nick...I've been watching you lately and you haven't been like this at all,"

"Well you've been watching me when I haven't been drugged by some lunatic ex-stalker of mine," Nick retorts to Nigel, knowing that this is not going to end well. "Come on, Nigel. I've got nothing to lose,"  
"I see that you're still mourning Warrick's death, aren't you? Tell me, Nick, how did it feel to see that bullet after being lodged into your best friend's soul? How did it feel watching your mentor cradle him in his arms desperately, praying to God that he is still alive? How did it feel-?"

Nigel is cut off as Nick lifted his feet and kicks Nigel's stomach with both of his feet. As Nigel cringes, Nick rolls into the bathroom and nods for the girl to shut the door. He hears the lock click as the girl secures the door.

"Nick, are you okay?" the girl says as she kneels next to him, cutting the tie on Nick's hand with a razor. The razor cuts him in the skin and the wound stings Nick for a couple of seconds. "Sorry,"

"It's okay..." Nick says, sitting up and getting a good look at the girl for the first time. She looks so familiar...

"Cassie?" Nick asks, thrown off by the red hair, but drawn in by the eyes. He also notices the faded scar left by her kidnappers on her neck.

Cassie embraces Nick tightly, and he can feel a tear trickle onto his shoulder.

"He...he dyed my hair and-and was just so i_forceful_/i...He was saying how he wanted to kill you and-and that one day I'd be calling him Nick Stokes and I just wanted to find you and protect you and..."

"Shh, Cassie, it's okay," Nick comforts her, holding her in his arms. He feels like he is holding his daughter after she broke up with a girlfriend. This feeling is one of those feelings that causes Nick to wish he was married and had children...

"We're gonna get out of this," Nick asserts. "I don't know how, but we will,"

After about two minutes, Cassie is able to recover from her small breakdown. She stares at the door apprehensively, as if Crane would come busting through the door.

"Oh, God, what if he shoots the knob?" Cassie thinks out loud.

"He won't," Nick replies in a grim tone. "Not yet, at least. I have a feeling that we'll be playing hide and seek with him,"

* * *

Morgan, Reid and Rossi had little time to settle in before being summoned to the layout room of the Las Vegas Crime Lab. Catherine had filled them in on the phone call received by Raymond Langston, and they are now going to let them listen to the full audio.

"Captain Jim Brass immediately recognized the uneasiness in Ray's tone and received the signal Ray had given him by calling him another name. A previous co-worker had used this technique before to signal that she was in trouble. Brass remembered this and immediately recorded the conversation," Catherine briefs the agents before she presses the play button. She can feel Greg and Sara shift uneasily next to her. They were probably also flashing back to the tape Walter Gordon had sent the team along with the webcam feed of Nick Stokes, who had been abducted and buried alive.

"What's up, Ray?" Brass answers on the tape.

"I just wanted to let you know that you accidentally gave us the wrong address. It's nothing too serious, but if you can let David know the right address so he can get the bodies, that would be helpful. Oh, and the responding officers have called in the right address so it will be in the records in case something goes wrong," Langston replies.

"Ray, what's going on over there?"

"Also, there is a on going power outage occurring in the area, so our GPS trackers have died. I know you guys get alerted when something like that happens...What was that, Nick?...I have to go, the power is going out again,"

"Ray-?"

Click.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own the ideas/characters presented in "CSI" and "Criminal Minds." The only thing I own in this story is the SSK, which is an inside joke with me and a friend. Please enjoy. :D

* * *

Ray Langston had watched Nick's unconscious body get taunted to and kicked by Nigel Crane. There are eight large monitors in the room he is being held in. All the views are different areas of the house. He notes that it is indeed being recorded, like standard surveillance cameras in stores. Nick seems to have woken up because Langston can see Crane moving his lips, unless he's talking to Cassie. He cannot hear what is going on, but whatever Crane had just said sets Nick off. Nick kicks Crane hard in the stomach and then rolls into the bathroom, out of view. Cassie seems to be the one who closes the door. Crane is still cringing, his shotgun dropping onto the ground. After a minute, Crane leaves the frame and Langston can see him limping up the stairs in another view.

"Feisty friend you've got. The cops went down easily when Crane and Danny had taken them on. Nick will be much more trouble to gut out, won't he?" the supposed "Jekyll" comments to Langston.

Langston knows that this man cannot be Dr. Jekyll. He doesn't fit the profile that Langston has been forming in his mind for the last couple months.

"Danny is the one responsible for the power outage, I assume?" Langston replies sourly, still sitting in the armchair next to the bed. He had just been forced to call someone at the lab and tell them that they are in an area with a massive power outage, so communication has been cut off in case of emergency. This phone call has basically screwed over the chance of the team finding Nick and Langston, if they even suspect that he is gone. Langston did make it clear that they were in trouble, though, by calling Brass by Catherine's name.

Langston hears the door rattle. It must be Crane unlocking the door. Sure enough, it is Crane and he locks the door behind him. He is panting, still clutching his stomach after being kicked by Nick. He practically ignores Langston and "Jekyll" and heads over to the monitors. Langston watches as Crane takes out a wireless microphone and sets it up to a speaker system.

"You may have won the battle, Nick," Crane pants into the device. "But you WILL lose the war,"

* * *

"SSA Aaron Hotchner had to catch a later flight. He's just coming off from a day off with his son," Morgan explains to Catherine in the break room, which has become the FBI agents' headquarters for the case. Morgan is having his first cup of coffee for the night, and Catherine is having her second.

"Yeah, I know what it's like to have this kind of job and raising a kid at the same time," Catherine responds. Reid and Rossi are with Greg and Sara, using security camera footage from intersections throughout the city and maps to figure out where Nick and Langston might be. Catherine and Morgan are waiting for their team members to finish.

"So how come you don't have any girl power in your team? I'm pretty sure I've seen female FBI agents before," Catherine asks, suddenly wanting to connect with a female of the FBI.

"Oh, we do. JJ and Prentiss are just busy with paperwork back home. And Garcia, our tech analyst works from her computer," Morgan explains, stirring the sugar in his coffee.

"How do you choose what case to work on, anyway?" Catherine inquires.

"Well, the choice is up to JJ. No offense intended, but I heard that she chose this case with 'eeny-meeny-miney-mo.'"

"You're serious?" Catherine chuckles.

"Yeah," Morgan replies, also starting to laugh. "Sometimes it just gets to that point, you know? Can't save the whole world at one time..."

"Hey, boss, I think I found out who the SSK is!" trace specialist David Hodges exclaims as he bursts into the break room.

Morgan raises an eyebrow and Catherine clears her throat.

"Hodges, now is not the time to talk about that game, okay?" Catherine tells him, hinting the importance of the case at hand.

"Oh, my apologies...I'll just, uh, go find Stokes then," Hodges apologizes and begins to back up out of the room.

"Wait...you haven't heard?" Catherine asks suspiciously. News usually travels fast in the lab.

"Haven't heard what?" Hodges asks innocently. Catherine then realizes that Hodges is trying to linger around and get some face with the FBI agents.

"Why don't you go ask Wendy what's going on, Hodges?" Catherine replies, standing up and putting her hand on his shoulder, leading him out the door.

"Let me guess," Morgan says when Catherine sits back down. "He's the lab's kiss-ass."

"You just won the grand prize," Catherine replies, and before asking how he knew that she reminds herself that Morgan is a criminal profiler.

"What's SSK?" Morgan asks.

Catherine laughs. "The 'Sucker Serial Killer.' We get bored while waiting for evidence to process sometimes," Catherine explains. "I bought a bag full of suckers and I'll leave wrappers and sticks lying in various places in the lab from time to time. The wrappers have 'SSK' written on them and also little clues written on post-it notes. My boss, Ecklie, doesn't really approve of this game, but I've seen a notepad on his desk, with his handwriting, with a list full of suspects,"

Catherine and Morgan laugh and Catherine refills her cup of coffee.

"Do you know who the killer is yet?"

"Nope, haven't decided," Catherine replies with a smile. "But what's sad is I heard that day shift is starting to get involved, too,"

* * *

"Cassie, do you remember seeing a pair of cops come into this house?" Nick asks as he raids the mirror cabinet of the bathroom him and Cassie are taking refuge in. The bathroom is a little cramped. Cassie is sitting on the closed toilet and Nick is standing in front of the sink. Next to Nick is a bathtub/shower combination.

"Yes," Cassie replies shakily. "Crane took one of them down when he had been investigating the area down here...I don't know where the other one went. All I remember is Crane knocking the cop out and then returning to aiming the shotgun at me. I think another man took the cop's body,"

"Have you seen this other man? Have you even left this bathroom?"

"No...Crane did bring me upstairs when your car crashed...we heard it. He kept me in some room and then forced me to help bring you down here. I tried to wake you up by digging my nails into your ankles, but obviously it didn't work,"

"How about another man, wearing a Forensics windbreaker? His name's Ray Langston, Crane might have talked to him a little?"

"I saw Crane force him into another room, but I couldn't hear anything from it,"

_Sound proof..._Nick thinks to himself. He turns toward the door and starts to formulate a plan.

"He also took yours and Langston's stuff, but I don't know where they put it," Cassie reports to Nick.

"Okay, we need to find those cops and get armed," Nick tells her. "Then we need to find Langston,"

"Then what?" Cassie acts as Nick unlocks the door.

"No idea, I'm improvising,"

"Well, I hope you're improvising this correctly," Cassie replies as Nick opens the door.


End file.
